In your review of Gordon Barrass’s The Great Cold War you quote the CIA’s Milt Bearden as saying “We didn’t realize just how f***ing scared Soviet leaders were of us!”

I am surprised to read that coming from a leading CIA expert on the Soviet Union, because anyone who served in our Moscow embassy and had to work with the Soviets on various programs, as I did, surely knew that they were scared stiff over us. We saw it in every meeting we had with them, how closely they listened to what we said, and how cautious they were in replying to our proposals. The fear was obvious.